February 2012

LightSquared vows to fight FCC decision

Wireless start-up LightSquared plans to fight the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) move to reject its proposed nationwide 4G network.

Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's vice president for regulatory affairs, said the company will file a formal comment with the FCC urging the agency not to follow through on its proposal to "indefinitely suspend" LightSquared's authority to operate cell towers. When asked if the company plans to sue the FCC over the decision, Carlisle said, "We'll see where it goes." LightSquared can challenge the FCC's decision as "arbitrary and capricious" in federal appeals court. CEO Philip Falcone said there were solutions to GPS-related issues that would allow the service to go forward, "if rational public policy prevails." He left no doubt he did not believe it had done so to date. "I made this multibillion dollar investment in LightSquared in reliance on FCC's stated conditions for our receiving a license. Today's Public Notice by the FCC not only disregards this decade-old regulatory order but also reverses a policy adopted by Republican leadership in 2005. In doing so, it jeopardizes private enterprise, jobs and telecom investment in America's future."

Falcone's Plan B: Swapping Airwaves

LightSquared may seek to exchange its wireless airwave licenses for similar ones operated by the Department of Defense in a last-ditch effort to revive its mobile broadband service, according to people familiar with the company's plans. LightSquared had been criticized by the Defense Department, legislators and makers of farm equipment and Global Positioning System devices, who say its network signal operates too close to those used for GPS and could interfere. In comparison, the Defense Department airwaves -- used primarily for aircraft testing -- operate on a frequency farther away from GPS signals making it less likely to cause any jamming. Such an airwaves swap would be difficult -- it's not clear the Defense Department would be interested in such an exchange and LightSquared would need to raise additional funds.

Loss of a Wireless Dream Caps a Fast Fall From Grace

It was as ambitious a bet as any hedge fund manager could imagine: building a wireless network from scratch to compete with the likes of AT&T and Verizon. But the dream has come crashing down to earth for Philip A. Falcone, the investor whose multibillion-dollar wager has been all but halted by the Federal Communications Commission.

The agency, which initially blessed Falcone’s plans for a 4G network, changed course after an adviser determined the signal would interfere with GPS systems. The decision could spell disaster not just for LightSquared, the upstart venture, but also for Falcone’s career as a money manager. He paid billions of dollars to launch a satellite into orbit and map out a forest of cellphone towers dense enough to service the nation. Now, after more than a year in Washington’s cross hairs, the crown jewel of Falcone’s efforts — representing some 60 percent of his main hedge fund — is in peril.

Trends in Latino Mobile Phone Usage: And What They Mean for U.S. Telecommunications Policy

The report offers the most comprehensive compilation of up-to-date data on how the Latino community is using mobile phones.

After comparing and contrasting findings from different sources, NHMC recommends a variety of policies to guarantee connectivity, affordability, and usability of mobile phones for all consumers. The first-of-its-kind report offers a comprehensive analysis of emerging trends in the way the Latino community uses cell phones. The compilation of the data indicates three major tendencies: Latinos are less likely to adopt broadband at home than other ethnic groups; are three times more likely than the general population to rely on mobile phones as their only means of Internet access; and are footing a larger mobile phone bills than any other demographic group. Based on the landscape of data compiled in the report, NHMC makes a number of policy recommendations to enable the Latino community to thrive as it embraces mobile technology, including:

Reforming the Universal Service Fund
Preserving competition in the wireless industry
Preserving the open Internet over fixed and mobile services
Protecting consumers from predatory business practices

Privacy controversy over Path for iPhone, iPad should be a wake-up call

[Commentary] For a country seemingly obsessed with reality television and tabloid journalism, the United States is suddenly very worried about privacy. And I’m not talking about celebrity privacy; I’m talking about your privacy.

The question we should all be asking is why. Why is it necessary for services such as Path to take or hold our data at all? As several developers and writers have pointed out, there are other ways to capture encrypted data. One method is called “hashing,” which creates specific, anonymous strings of numbers and letters from plain text data such as your name or phone number. Using that method, applications pulling the same content will get clear matches while exposing zero user data to a third party. Your data stay private, but you’re still able to find your friends within a service. Hopefully this is the start of a big wake-up call, because it seems clear that we all need to be thinking more seriously about where and how our information is used. If there are better ways to protect privacy, we need to push back hard and make companies adopt those practices. Then we need to keep watching to make sure they stick to it.

Google must remember our right to be forgotten

[Commentary] Last month the European Commission proposed adding a new “right to be forgotten” to privacy law. This deceptively simple idea is a ticking time-bomb in the booming internet economy. It is also essential – both for Europeans and Americans – to protect personal privacy in the age of pervasive social media and cloud computing.

The stakes are huge. Individual users of cloud services should have a legal right to be forgotten that supersedes whatever authorizations they (or their surrogates) granted when they created their accounts. Users should, in other words, have the right to change their minds as they learn the implications of that little box they unthinkingly ticked while signing up for the latest, greatest, cheapest cloud-based information service. Importantly, a right to be forgotten must recognize that the power, as well as the privacy risk, of big data comes principally from the metadata – the information on where, when and by whom the data were created. [Falkenrath is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a principal of the Chertoff Group]

Obama campaign launches first in SF: Technology campaign office

There’s no shortage of Obama volunteers in politically deep blue California, where his support is higher than elsewhere. But not every volunteer is up for slogging into a local campaign office and banging out a couple hundred rah-rah calls at a phone bank or going door-to-door and talking to strangers. So the Obama campaign has, for the first time, opened a new type of campaign office in San Francisco: A Technology Field Office. It is believed to be the first such type of campaign office for a presidential campaign. “We learned from 2008 that using the talents and skills of our supporters was a key to building the most effective organization,” said Obama campaign deputy press secretary Katie Hogan. “We’re taking the next step by providing tools and space for supporters in the technology community to help the campaign extend our current tools like BarackObama.com and our mobile applications.”

White House Honors Broadband Stimulus Project Innovators

Eleven individuals were honored as “Champions of Change” during a White House panel discussion on Wednesday, Feb. 15, for their efforts to implement innovative government projects using stimulus grant funding as a way to improve different infrastructures. White House administration officials and the selected champions discussed transportation and broadband projects funded by stimulus grants currently under way nationwide. Joe Freddoso, president and CEO of MCNC, and Donald Welch, president and CEO of Merit Network Inc., were two of the 11 individuals recognized for their efforts to carry out broadband infrastructure projects intended to better serve their respective communities.

Cybersecurity bill blocked by top GOP senators

There’s no disagreement on Capitol Hill that more needs to be done to protect the country’s critical infrastructure from potentially devastating cyberattacks. It’s just that lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, can’t agree on how to go about doing it.

That lack of harmony, which erupted into public view earlier this week, promises to hamstring an effort to quickly pass a sweeping cybersecurity bill through the Senate. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT), along with a handful of allies, unveiled a doorstop of a bill on Feb. 14 aimed at boosting defenses against escalating cyberthreats. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants quick floor action on the measure. But a group of top Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has called on Sen Reid to slow down. The same day Sen Lieberman revealed his bill, which was accompanied by choreographed floor speeches from its backers, top Republicans on seven other Senate committees wrote to Sens Reid and McConnell to complain that the measure was being rushed. The GOP critics said the measure should be vetted — through hearings and markups — by their committees.

Apple has incentive to worry about workers’ rights

Imagine a company generating an extra $1.5 billion in sales every week compared to what it earned only a year ago – and nearly all of that coming from products that it had dreamt up from scratch within the last half decade. These were things the world didn’t know until recently that it needed. That would be like General Motors conjuring up its entire North American sales – all the Chevrolets, Cadillacs, Buicks and GMC trucks – from nothing, in the space of just a year. That gives some idea of the enormity of Apple’s recent success on the back of the iPhone and iPad. Without those inventions, it would be a struggling computer maker trying to fill the gap left by shrinking iPod sales. Instead, it is a world-beater with a share price that surged past $500 this week and didn’t stop to catch breath. It was only with the launch of the iPad that Apple’s stock market value topped that of Microsoft, a company that once seemed unassailable: it is now worth nearly twice as much.

That makes Apple’s handling of the supply chain labor issues that continue to dog it a central concern not just for its own future but for the industry at large. Its scale and conspicuous brand have brought it unwelcome attention. But it is already ahead of its main rivals in trying to grapple with the underage labor, excessive forced overtime and inadequate safety standards that continue to be alleged against it, and the new standards it is helping to set will be felt across the industry. One implication is that costs will rise.

Benton

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